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Link. It is not at all inconceivable that some day not too many years off Rumsfeld and Bush will face arrest if they travel abroad for command responsibility for war crimes, like Pinochet. Update pertaining to comments at Matt's site on this issue. I am not saying there's moral equivalence between Pinochet's crimes and Rumsfeld's. I am saying, it seems likely to me that the lawsuit launched against Rumsfeld now in Germany and others potentially to follow against Rumsfeld and other US leaders are likely to take on a life of their own, and it's totally conceivable to me that Rumsfeld will not want to travel abroad at some point in the not-too-distant future without serious consultations with a lawyer, and maybe even then.FBI agents are increasingly complaining about what they consider abusive physical and mental torture by military officials against prisoners held in Iraq and Cuba, including lighted cigarettes stuck in detainees' ears and Arab captives being humiliated with Israeli flags wrapped around them, according to new documents released today.
The FBI records are the latest set of documents obtained by the ACLU in its lawsuit against the federal government and include instances in which bureau officials were disgusted that military interrogators pretended to be FBI agents and used the scheme as a "ruse" to glean intelligence information from prisoners.
In addition, the FBI complained that military interrogators have gone far beyond the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture and have followed an apparently new executive order from President Bush that permits the use of dogs and other techniques to harass prisoners...
Another unidentified FBI agent told his superiors in July that he had witnessed military interrogators and government contract employees at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using "aggressive treatment and improper interview techniques" on prisoners...
In other instances, a female prisoner "indicated she was hit with a stick," according to a memo from last May, and in July, Army criminal investigators were reviewing "the alleged rape of a juvenile male detainee at Abu Ghraib prison."
Still other agents gave more detailed accounts of abuse.
In June, for instance, an agent from the Washington field office reported that an Abu Ghraib detainee was "cuffed" and placed into a position the military called "The Scorpion" hold. Then, according to what the prisoner told the FBI, he was doused with cold water, dropped onto barbed wire, dragged by his feet and punched in the stomach.
In Cuba, a detainee in May, 2002, was reportedly spat upon and then beaten when he attempted to roll onto his stomach to protect himself. At one point, soldiers apparently were "beating him and grabbed his head and beat it into the cell floor," knocking him unconscious...
More from ABC News:
FBI e-mails dating from December 2003 and January 2004 complained of "DOD (Department of Defense) interrogators impersonating Supervisory Special Agents of the FBI" at Guantanamo.
A Dec. 5, 2003, e-mail said that "these tactics have produced no intelligence of a threat neutralization nature" and that the "techniques have destroyed any chance of prosecuting this detainee."
"If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done (by) the 'FBI' interrogators. The FBI will (be) left holding the bag before the public," the e-mail said.
The impersonation "was approved by the Dep Sec Def," a Jan. 21, 2004, e-mail stated, referring to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the Pentagon's No. 2 official...
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wolfowitz "did not approve interrogation techniques." Whitman added, "It is difficult to determine from the second-hand description whether the technique in this e-mail (impersonating the FBI) was permissible or not."
A May 22, 2004, e-mail, sent by an FBI agent in Iraq to senior FBI officials, referred repeatedly to what it said was an executive order signed by Bush, listing some of the methods the order authorized.
These included sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation by forcing detainees to wear hoods, the use of military dogs and stress positions such as forced squatting for an extended period, the e-mail stated.
A senior Bush administration official said, "The FBI agent was mistaken regarding the existence of an executive order on interrogation techniques. No such executive order exists or has ever existed. The Defense Department determines the methods of interrogation of military detainees in the Iraq conflict," said the official, who asked not to be named...
A heavily redacted June 25 FBI memo titled "URGENT REPORT" to the FBI director, provided details from someone "who observed serious physical abuses of civilian detainees" in Iraq.
"He described that such abuses included strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations," the document stated. The memo also mentioned "cover-up of these abuses."
Tuesday update: Greg Djerejian says there is a racial component to the abuse of prisoners in Cuba and Iraq (and not, say, of Bosnian Serb prisoners that were temporarily in NATO/US custody). As I wrote him, my feeling is that the abuse and torture that we have been hearing about is the result of from-the-top signals to do whatever it takes, disdain for international and even domestic law, and a sense of no accountability rampant in this administration. And also that Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz/Feith have basicaly tried to make Americans think Iraqis did 9/11 even while denying they are trying to make people think that.
What's most striking to me about these latest reports by the FBI is the dates -- as recently as June 25, 2004 -- e.g. three months after the Abu Ghraib photos aired on 60 Minutes and appeared in the New Yorker and congressmen fulminated across the land. Where is the accountability? Where's the follow up? Where's the oversight? Why isn't John Warner holding further hearings on the matter? Why hasn't Warner assigned a staff member to be at Gitmo following this all the time? Can't they do a more convincing charade of caring to stop this torture?